Category Archives: GM Blog Post

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…Halloween! I won’t say it’s my favorite holiday (that title goes to any holiday resulting in a long weekend) but it’s certainly a close second. And it’s the perfect time for me to give you three tips to add spookiness and tension to your PFS game. These tips assume you have some control over your environment, if you’re GMing at a store your mileage may vary. Set the tone early – There’s a […]

(Editor’s Note: Since I have recently returned from the Gamer’s Mecca that is Gen Con, and again, got in discussions with fellow GMs and players about what I carry when I’m ‘working’, I thought I’d reprise this article I posted to my own site about a year ago. A few things in here, like the Critical Hit and Fumble decks, are not useful for PFS. But overall I think it’s a helpful look at a decent GM kit. Hope you […]

It seems like the answer to this question should be pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? Start on page one and read the words, in order, until you get to the last page. Well, not so fast there, screen monkey! There is more to this under-utilized art than meets the eye and you too can master the subtle ways of the well-prepared game-master. What’s so important about reading the scenario? Before we dive into the ‘how’, we need to spend a few […]

Recently in my region, I had a lack of PFS Game Masters. We were still getting tables put together, but it was always the same small group of folks stepping up to run tables. As much as we all love GMing, myself included, it is easy to get burned out if you go too long. To avoid losing the GMs we had, we needed to find players willing to step up to a new role. As part of that search, […]

Whether you’ve just started as a PFS GM or have been at it a while, there are always ways to make your life easier, and spruce things up at the table. As someone who does a fair-to-moderate amount of GMing, I want to pass along three quick tips I use to make my table run a little smoother and add a bit of colour. These are all simple ‘fixes’ that anyone with a computer and printer can do; plenty of […]

This article is for GMs only, and contains many spoilers for scenarios and the overall plot. Reading this is considered the same as reading the scenarios before playing them, and must be declared to the GM as per the Guide to Organized Play. The scenarios of Season Two are the hardest to integrate into a current PFS campaign because they deal with the Shadow Lodge meta-plot, a long-running campaign of betrayal and corruption, the results of which are already common knowledge. […]

Greetings Pathfinders! This week, Lady Ophelia is on leave from Know Your Nations, and instead her normal counterpart Venus, is posting a fun bit about convention travelling! (Don’t worry; Lady Ophelia will be back next week to continue the Know Your Nations series.) If you are planning on GMing at PaizoCon, there is a lot to consider. So below are some tips to help you be prepared! Paper vs. Electronic Paper: Easier to carry, can lose or get messed up, and […]

Demons are complex encounters no matter the type. Many times in a scenario, demons are included without included tactics. We wanted to follow up our first article on tactics by focusing specifically on outsiders, so we are going to talk about the succubus. Succubi are social creatures and prefer to talk out situations, seducing characters and isolating them from their party. However, sometimes a succubus is forced into combat. While a succubus is not a front line fighter, she is […]

[Based on reader feedback, I’m providing a bit more detail and spoilers for certain scenarios – hopefully this will help GMs select scenarios and prepare for them. As always, the GM Shared Prep is an invaluable resource for prep, and Pathfinderwiki gives additional detail and insight into the locations and people of Golarion. – Lamplighter] Season One was the first season of the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign to use the Pathfinder RPG rules. No mechanical conversion is necessary to […]

From the title you might think this is a debate about whether zombies or ghouls would win in a fight (spoiler – it’s ghouls) but really, this is a post about tactics. Game Masters are supposed to run PFS scenarios as written, including the monster tactics. But sometimes a scenario just points to a stat block in the Bestiary. How do you make sure you are running the monsters as intended? In this article, we are going to analyse two […]

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